Highly Overrated But Still Good

Best movie of this year hands down!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A wife searches for her photojournalist husband in war-torn Yugoslavia. She has the help of some other journalists who had left her husband for dead. We see the Serbian army killing anyone and everyone in its path, and even the destruction of a hospital. I guessed the movie must have been filmed in the Czech Republic, and I was right. Sad to say, some of the scenes probably did not need much "dressing" to suggest the utter destruction wrought by the blood-mad Serbs. Andie MacDowell is the determined wife and David Strathairn is the missing husband. They are supported in their efforts by gifted actors like Elias Koteas, Adrian Brody and Brendan Gleason. Based on a book, this is a compelling love story using modern war as a backdrop.

The love story of this movie is so silly (someone already wrote it in previous comments). Also, the story about war in Yugoslavia, about Croatian and Serbian people is so wrong. It can't be that only Serbs did things that are shown in the movie. The truth is that Croatian people did the same awful things and they are not shown in the movie in the right way. Do you know how many innocent Serbs, women, children, were killed by Croatian army in so terrible way?If you decide to see this movie i would like to recommend you first to inform your self about this war and to find out a true story about it. I wouldn't recommend this movie.

If you are watching this movie to watch one or another of the cast members, or because you want to watch a war movie, or because you want to see the story of a woman tragically trying to rescue her husband, you'll have to change your expectations when watching this film: I know I had to. Andie MacDowell, David Strathairn, Brendan Gleeson, Adrien Brody, Elias Koteas, and all the rest of the cast, are marvelous, of course, and ultimately the way they threw themselves into their characters made the movie what it was--stunning."Harrison's Flowers" is not just a love story, a war movie, or a point-blank tragedy: neither is it simply an explanation of why photographers aren't as insane as we think. Certainly it contains elements of all those ideas. The incandescent relationship between Harrison and Sarah Lloyd is beautiful in its simplicity, though it is certainly not the main thrust behind the movie, as the title might suggest; war is obviously portrayed as bloody, destructive, and painful; the photographers/photojournalists focused on in the film are gorgeous characters, all with intense motivations and ideas. But "Harrison's Flowers" goes beyond any of that, becoming--I think--one of the best films ever made about a civilian's perspective towards war. Because it primarily concerns civilians, it doesn't follow along the lines of "Behind Enemy Lines" or "Saving Private Ryan" or even "The Thin Red Line", which all concern the soldier's perspectives: watching your comrades die, following orders or doing the right thing, living as a coward or dying heroically.... No. "Harrison's Flowers" has nothing to do with fighting for a cause, or with warrior-bonds between men, or even a statement against war. It is a beautiful, graphic, tragic explanation of why photographers and photojournalists do and should continue to do what they do: capture the world of war in Kodak, to remind us of it when it is gone, to remind us of destruction in times of peace, to remind us why war between men happens, to remind us of who really suffers during war--not just the soldiers, but the civilians, as well. The film's dedication (to the photographers and journalists who died in the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995) reveals this further. If you're anything like me, after seeing this film you'll feel motivated to better the world and reveal evil, not matter if it means starving, freezing with fear, being wounded, and perhaps even dying--like the very, very human photographers and journalists in this film do.

When her photo-journalist husband is reported killed during the Croatian-Serbian war, an American woman refuses to believe his death and sets out to find him. Ill-prepared, she very quickly encounters the depravity and horrific violence of the events of Yugoslavia 1991-92.Harrison's Flowers plays like an uncomfortable hybrid between a gritty European film, and a rather crass US TV movie. Whilst the scenes of war, and the experiences of journalists on the front line are captured to astonishing, and frequently devastating effect, the very notion of MacDowell wandering through the carnage looking for her husband approaches the ridiculous. MacDowell isn't necessarily a bad actor, and has often been shown to good effect in a number of funny and successful comedies. However, she just doesn't have the chops to carry such a brutal and shocking story, and as such is the film's central flaw. This viewer can't help wondering what kind of movie it would have been had, say, Cate Blanchett played Sarah. Other performances are excellent, and deeply credible, and asides from a frankly unbelievable ending, this film sears its way into the memory and reminds how shocking this period of history was.